The Morocco Diaries Part 1: Travel Woes

When Jason and I first started thinking about how we wanted to spend our Christmas holidays, (I believe we started this discussion in September, just weeks after we had arrived in Prague. Such is the life of constant travelers.) we had two main criteria: warm winter weather and not too expensive.

We started looking at maps and coming up with new destinations, some that were just a little out of our league... "Ohhh! What if we went to the MALDIVES???" But we began looking at airfare for places that seemed a little more within our reach. Our list of ideas came down to: The Canary Islands, Jordan/Israel, Morocco or the South of Portugal/Spain. We were really into the Jordan and Israel idea, but we missed the window of affordable flights and it proved too expensive. After a visit with our new friend Dana in Bratislava, we were convinced Morocco would be the right place for us. Dana is a big Morocco fan and has made 3 trips there, one for several months. Her tales left no doubts for us and we booked tickets upon returning home from Bratislava. What a new and interesting culture, we thought. It will be unlike anywhere else we've been.

And we were right.

But before getting to all of that, there was the experience of making our way down to Morocco. We booked multiple flights to find the cheapest option: We would fly from Prague to Milan, spend the day there, fly to Madrid, spend the night there, and finally arrive in Marrakech, Morocco early the next morning.

After a stressful week leading up to our holiday, I was ready to just get away and enjoy the sun and time away from work. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite that easy (in the beginning at least). We took a rather expensive taxi to the airport at 4 AM in order to make our 6 AM flight to Milan. Tired and exhausted, we waited at the gate for our plane to arrive. Then, it was delayed an hour due to bad weather in Milan. Shortly after the announcement that our flight would be late, new agents approached the gate and announced that the flight was, in fact, canceled. Well great.

Knowing that a canceled flight means a long line of people at the check-in counter arguing for possibly hours, we grabbed our stuff and booked it up to check-in. Somehow we were the first to arrive at the counter and had our problems dealt with immediately.

"We need to go to Madrid."

"Oh, that's great! We have a flight at 4 this afternoon, we'll change your flight no problem."

And that was that. Too easy..? Nah.

We headed back to our flat and fell back into bed to rest, all before sunrise. What a long morning.

Luckily, that was our only problem of the trip, and it ended up not being a big deal. We went back to the airport that afternoon and boarded our new flight. We made it to Madrid by 8 o'clock, early enough to head into town for dinner. We hopped the metro and headed to the city center to find one of my most missed restaurants from when I studied in Spain: Maoz!! Ok, so it's not actually Spanish food. It's a vegetarian falafel restaurant that is delicious and wonderful and is popular in Spain. I think it might be a Dutch company, and they even have a few restaurants in the US on the east coast. It was perfect to just sit and eat at one of my favorite places and reminisce about late night Maoz runs in Barcelona. I finally started to relax and feel better about going on this wonderful vacation.

After some walking around the Puerta del Sol, it was time to head to our luxurious hotel for the night: the airport. That's right, we joined around 40+ people in sleeping on the cold, marble floors of the arrival hall of the Madrid Barajas Airport. People slept on chairs in the restaurants, on folded out cardboard like homeless people, atop their suitcases, and even on the baggage conveyor belts. It was quite the scene. But from what I understand, it's like this every night.

So we found ourselves a little corner of marble floor, spread out our coats to lie on, popped in the iPod headphones and slept. Surprisingly well actually. Well, I woke up a lot, but I got more sleep than to be expected. Then it was another morning up at 4 AM to stand in the long check-in line for our flight to Marrakech. We frantically moved around the things in our backpacks to try to smash them down as much as we could for the impossibly strict RyanAir; they actually check the size and weight- several times- of your ONE alloted carry on bag. Fortunately we made the cut and were finally cleared through to the gate.

Waiting at the gate, some fellow North Face-clad guys waiting for our same flight noticed us obvious Americans and introduced themselves. Mike and David, both Americans living in Madrid and heading to Marrakech for Christmas, proved to be great travel friends in the upcoming Moroccan days.